From our years of experience in public relations, we know it can be challenging for both established companies and startups to stand out in a crowded field. Today, this is particularly true for the highly competitive drone industry. New players are jumping into the mix, and acquisitions and strategic partnerships are making established companies even more formidable.

That’s why we’re back with even more insights and recommendations to help your drone company rise above the noise - and stay ahead of the swarm.

Let’s start with the insights - and brace yourself for some mind blowing numbers. A few weeks ago, we attended an amazing research briefing “Flying High: The State of Drone Technology” (h/t CB Insights), and heard some incredible things. For example, did you know that since 2013, drone companies have raised $1.5 billion dollars across 302 deals? In 2016 alone, more than $450 million was invested in drone companies.

It doesn’t stop there. According to Gartner, production of drones for personal and commercial use is growing rapidly, with global market revenue expected to increase 34 percent to reach more than $6 billion in 2017 and grow to more than $11.2 billion by 2020. Almost three million drones will be produced in 2017, 39 percent more than in 2016.

Given all this industry activity, we wanted to share some proven tactics that can help you stand out in a crowd, even if you’re not involved with something as cool as a flame-throwing drone. We discussed a few in our last post, and pulled together three more tips to help you keep moving in the right direction:

Make it easy to find you. (Search Engine Optimization) Just to put things in perspective, a simple Google search on the word “drone” brings up 176,000,000 results. So how can your drone company move up towards the top of that pile? The most effective way is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the process of enhancing your website’s pages with “keywords” that summarize who you are and what you do, and will attract the attention of search engines and in turn boost your rankings - making it easier for prospective customers, business partners and investors to find you. Now take it a step further by adding those same keywords to blog posts along with links to high-traffic sites. The combination of both will not only improve your search ranking, but also help maximize the number of visitors to your website, and increase awareness of your company across all search engines. Now that’s what we call a win/win/win. Just don’t “overstuff” your site with keywords. Search engine algorithms are smart and will know what you’re up to.

Don’t just socialize among yourselves. (Paid Social Media Ad Buying) Making an investment in paid social media ad buying across platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram presents unique opportunities to reach your targeted audiences with valuable and engaging content. The companies who do this most effectively speak to those audiences with one authentic and unique brand voice that resonates across all channels. Monitor the words your customers use to describe your products - hopefully nothing NSFW - and incorporate them into your ad campaigns.

Publish or perish (Content Management, “Content Clusters”). We touched on this tactic in the SEO tip, but it’s worth elaborating on here. Publishing a steady drumbeat of engaging content on your website blog is an effective way to share company news, present thought leadership positions and attract more visitors. But don’t stop there. Create a “content cluster” by leveraging a topic across text, audio and video media. Blog posts can be edited and submitted in the form of bylined articles to media outlets and other blogs that accept contributed content (review submission guidelines first to be sure your topics are on target). You can also turn those topics into podcast segments, online videos, and more.

At Indicate Media, we can work with you on all of the above as part of a strategic, smart and successful digital public relations campaign backed by powerful data analytics that will deliver quantifiable results and maximum outcomes. Sound good? Let’s talk. To schedule an introductory call, contact us at drone@indicatemedia.com.